Alabama Lawmaker Holds Up $38 Million in Payments to Department of Corrections Attorney Sanctioned for AI-Written Brief
by Chuck Sharman
Alabama attorney Bill Lunsford has been a “rainmaker” for the Montgomery office of Butler Snow LLP, raking in over $42 million in contracts since 2020 to defend the state Department of Corrections (DOC) in various litigations. Now state Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa) is calling “enough”; on August 6, 2026, the lawmaker, who sits on the state House Contract Review Committee, put 45-day holds on two contract increases totaling $38 million for Lunsford and Butler Snow.
“There is a direct correlation between how much you pay your lawyers and how bad of a client you are,” England told the Alabama Reflector. “And the Department of Corrections is an awful client.”
As PLN reported, Lunsford and two fellow attorneys were called out by a federal judge in May 2025 for using artificial intelligence (AI) to draft briefs defending the DOC against a prisoner’s civil rights lawsuit. [See: PLN, Aug. 2025, p.18.] The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama then made good on its threat on July 23, 2025, kicking all three Butler Snow attorneys off the case and referring them to the state Bar for further sanctions.
The attorneys—Lunsford, Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford—“confirmed in writing and at a hearing that the citations were hallucinations of a popular generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) application, ChatGPT,” the Court recalled, adding: “In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up.” Because “[f]abricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction,” the Court determined that something more serious was needed than “the reprimands and modest fines that have become common as courts … confront this form of AI misuse.” The sanctions order also included a public reprimand for the three lawyers. See: Johnson v. Dunn, 792 F. Supp. 3d 1241 (N.D. Ala. 2025).
But that didn’t stop the DOC from asking for several huge contract increases for Lunsford and his firm. One $3 million increase raises the contract to $4.65 million in a class-action challenge to DOC mental health care that the district court found “horrendously inadequate.” See: Braggs v. Dunn, USDC (M.D. Ala.), Case No. 2:14-cv-0060. [See also: PLN, Mar. 2022, p.38.] The other amendment hikes fees from $3.6 million to a whopping $36.6 million in a suit filed by the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging that DOC lockups are “riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence.” See: United States v. Alabama, USDC (N.D. Ala.), Case No. 2:20-cv-01971. [See also: PLN, Apr. 2021, p.34.]
England told fellow committee members during the hearing that he wants “to get to a point where we analyze this from a position of trying the case and how much it costs us, and settling the case and how much it costs us.”
On May 28, 2026, the district court dismissed the suit in which Lunsford and his fellow attorneys were sanctioned, after a settlement was reached with prisoner Frankie Johnson, resolving claims that officials failed to protect him from repeated assaults by fellow prisoners. Alabama is stingy with such settlement details, but PLN will update them as soon as they are available. See: Johnson v. Dunn, USDC (N.D. Ala.), Case No. 2:21-cv-01701.
Additional source: Alabama Reflector
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